


By The Rules

by aliitvodeson



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Post Reichenbach, but happy ending, reuinion, some angsty moments, some fluffy moments, tissues possiby needed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliitvodeson/pseuds/aliitvodeson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's coming back to London. But Moran hasn't forgotten that Sherlock broke the rules of the game. And John's life is forfeit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By The Rules

**Author's Note:**

> Co-authored with Andrea Kendrick (whose wonderful work can be found here - http://azureverie.tumblr.com/ ) for the Sherlock Mini-Band Challenge.

 

_Beep. Beep. Beep._   
_The machines just kept on beeping the same steady tempo, even when Sherlock picked up John’s still, nearly cold, hand. He didn’t say anything, because that would have been sentimental and he didn’t. Do. Sentiment. His thoughts turned dark; and, all too conscious of the eyes on his back, he let go of John’s hand, placing it carefully on top of the sheets. He has a thousand different things he’d planned on saying to John when he could finally return to London and not a single plan stored up in his mind palace had accounted for what to say when he returned to this._   
_Three years and he still couldn’t see John’s face for all the bandages and tubes coming in and out of John’s body. The small man seemed even smaller among all the hospital machines. The sheets (starched using a cheap medical brand, washed last night, bought through the usual medical supplier) bunch at strange angles over his torso, mountains and valleys in the cloth where there should only be the smooth curve of healthy and whole John. He was propped up slightly by the adjustable curve of the bed, his lower face shrouded by a breathing tube and mask._   
_The nurse (fresh out of school, cheating on her boyfriend with one of the hospital doctors, two younger sisters at home) had been in to check on John just twenty minutes ago, and Mary was out in the hall talking to Mycroft. For the moment, he had the room to himself and John. Now would be the perfect time to explain himself, to tell John everything that had transpired in the past three years, why Sherlock had faked his death. The time to tell John how it was Sherlock’s fault that Moran had set up a rifle on the building. How Sherlock had failed to foresee that Moriarty’s sniper for Sherlock would be more than just another hired gun._   
_It would have been the perfect time to explain everything. The last piece of Moriarty’s web had been burned away and Sherlock was free to return to his friends at last. He’d thought about this moment at least half a dozen times since the fateful day at Bart’s. What he’d say, how John would react._   
_Sherlock would have explained everything, if only John had been able to hear him._

He watched from the ninth story window as the crowd gathered, the ambulance pulled up to the curb, the police pushed the crowd back. The corpse he’d created lay cooling in the next room; he really didn’t care. What he needed to see was that those last few seconds of life hadn’t been spent creating another corpse. There was a soft breeze coming in through the window, an off circular hole letting in downtown London air. He started to hear, faint and indistinct, the shoots of police clearing the floor. He’d need to go.  
He turned, intending to check the progress of the officers on the video feed. When he turned back to the window, the ambulance was closing it’s doors, already beginning to pull out from the curb and across the street. He’d missed the information he had stayed to see. No, wait. Two police cruisers were sliding into position in the front and rear of the ambulance. A police escort meant that the sniper had fled. John Watson remained alive.  
For now.  
He spun away from the window, already pulling out his mobile, ducking down so as not to be seen by the officers as they crept closer to his position. By the time he’d reached the balcony and rappelled down to the floor below, he’d sent three text messages.  
Which hospital, it’s over, and two hours. Heathrow.  
Molly was the first to respond. She didn’t text back though, as he would preferred. She called him, his phone vibrating in his hand as he looked down, debating whether or not to answer it. She must have anticipated this, because when the call went through to voicemail without him answering, another one started, same contact calling as soon as he didn’t answer the first call.  
He answered as he was stepping into the stairwell. The concrete walls and floors echoed his voice back to him, the absolutely dismal reception made it difficult to hear Molly through the static. “I told you Molly, only texts. Calls waste time.” He pressed the end call button, cutting off her muffled protests.  
She called him twice more as he ran down the stairs. He shoved his mobile in his pocket, ignoring the soft vibrations against his waist as yet another one of her calls went through. Finally, there’s the gentle ping of a text. He waited until he could skip out the doorway and into the alley before he pulled the mobile out. One text from Molly Hooper.  
What do you mean, which hospital? Is everything alright?  
He tapped out a reply as he crouched down in the shadow of a garbage bin. John’s been shot. Which hospital will they take him to?  
She replied nearly instantly. The ambulance crew can tell you that.  
I’m not with the ambulance crew. He sighed as he replied. This was tedious. Molly should have just answered the question. It was simple why couldn’t she just tell him the answer. There were three hospitals in London capable of treating a wound such as John’s, all three roughly equidistant from the scene.  
His mobile vibrated, Molly’s face popping up as the caller. With a groan of annoyance, he’d much rather text than talk but if he had to for the answer...  
Molly was already raging when he got the mobile up to his ear. “What do you mean you’re not with the ambulance crew? Aren’t they there yet? I swear Sherlock, if you’ve run off again and just left John to bleed out on his own-” She dropped off, her voice becoming suddenly silent.  
Over the past three years, as he’d run all over Europe and North America, Molly had become a close assistant of his. Oh, she could never match John (no one could ever match John) but she was good and got him the information he requested. Never questioned why he needed to know the biggest exporter of honey crisp apples. Didn’t balk at being the sole keeper of his secrets. For most of that three year period, the only one who knew he was alive. A moral compass, in many ways, to a man adrift in an ocean of immorality.  
Clearly, she wasn’t afraid of rippling him apart as she saw fit.  
“You’re not with him, are you.” It sure didn’t sound like a question. “Sherlock, how could you? Leave him on his own? After everything you’ve been through to save that man, are you going to abandon him once more?” She still sounded angry but she wasn’t yelling at least.  
“He’s better off without me.” Sherlock heard his voice echoing faintly off the brick walls of the alley. “He has a new life. Why should he need, want, me when I can’t even save him from Moran?”  
“Sherlock.” Her voice was a conflict in his ear, hard edges of orders fighting with the gentle way she seemed to savour his name. “They’ll have brought him, to St. Bart’s. Now if you don’t find a way here and sit at his bedside until he heals, I will tell him everything myself.”  
“Molly-”  
She cut him off. “I mean it. John deserves the truth. Now he either gets it from you or he gets it from me, but he gets it either way. You’ve kept him in the dark long enough. I understand why,” she cut off his angry retort and continued as if he hadn’t said anything, “but no longer.”  
“Molly,” she let him continue this time. “I can’t just explain things to him. He thinks I’m dead. He,” his voice caught in his throat. When he continued, it was with painful slowness. “He probably hates me.”  
From the sounds Molly was making, he knew she was shaking her head. “He doesn’t hate you. But he will if you walk away from him now.”  
Sherlock saw the blue and white lights of the police cruisers eliminate the alley, and the outline of two figures at it’s mouth. too far away to make out faces, but he hadn’t deleted those particular people. He knew them. And the plan forming in his mind took on a far more definite shape.  
“Alright.” He found himself nodding as he walked towards the alley exit. “I’ll be there. I’ll... get a ride to the hospital.”  
“Good.” She paused, and he went to hang up before he heard more words from her end. “And Sherlock?” Another pause. He waited through this one, pausing in his walk forward. “It’s good to have you home.”

“Ballistics say they found a rifle and two pistols in the office building over there.” Sally nodded her head at the hilding across the street. The whole block had been roped off, thank God. They weren’t dealing with the crowd at this point. Sniper cases meant they needed to start big before they could even hope to narrow it down to one or two crime scenes. “All three firearms have been fired. Looks like we found our prep’s weapon.”  
“Or multiple weapons.” Greg answered absentmindedly. He was currently focused on the ongoing photographing of the blood spatters on the cement. An unusual amount, given that the victim had survived. His mind paused there. The victim. None of them had used his name yet. The photo had been passed around, situation discussed, but always with the neutral term of the victim.  
“And,” Sally was still listening to the radio, her eyes widening slightly at whatever was being relayed to her, “they found another body in the building.”  
Greg turned back from the cluster of forensic officers and stared at her. “A second body?”  
She nodded. “In the office building. Not in the same room as the firearms, but close to it. Two bullet wounds they’ve identified. Ambulance is on it’s way, but the guy’s dead dead.”  
“Get a photographer up there before they cart him off then.”  
“Already done.”  
A second body changed things. With one sniper and one victim, it was a simple case of gun for hire. But two bodies? A victim and two gun men? Two victims? Office worker getting in the way? Snipers weren’t known for direct confrontation with civilians. It was unlikely he’d risk his hit to take out office security. “Is he in the building records? Work there, just picking something up after hours? What’s he doing there?”  
Sally rolled her eyes, dropping the radio back to her hip. “No I.D. on him. If he is our prep, there won’t be.”  
“Professional. Anything sniper has to be a pro-job.”  
“Of course.” But she wasn’t looking at Greg’s face anymore and her voice sounded distant, distracted, uncaring. Her eyes were directed over his shoulder. “Greg.” Sally looked like she was going to faint. He reached out a hand to steady her automatically, and she grabbed onto it, her short fingernails pinching his skin. “Behind you. Tell me I haven’t gone mad.”  
Greg turned, slowly, Sally still holding onto his arm. He’d been standing near the curb, with his back to the clinic. Now he looked at the brick facade of the walk-in clinic and the shadows of the alley behind. There was movement in the shadows, someone stepping closer to the main street. Someone with a tall, lanky form. Greg could see why Sally thought she might have gone mad. The man was wearing a long overcoat and even in those dark shadows, Greg could half imagine the form materializing to have wild black curls and piercing green-grey eyes.  
Greg thought he might be going mad as well. Because when the mad moved even closer to the end of the alley and he stepped into the pale gold of the street light, he had those sharp cheekbones and errant curls. and even though his curls were shorter, and Greg couldn’t see the colour of his eyes from this distance, greg knew. Either he was sharing a hallucination with one of his fellow law officers, or Sherlock Holmes had faked his death three years ago and come back from the grave.  
“Is that?” Sally let go of his arm now. He could still feel her presence behind him, adrenaline making him hyper aware of her breathing and shuffling behind him. “It can’t be.”  
The man continued forward, out of the alley and across the sidewalk, his features growing more distinct every second. “Detective Inspector.” He inclined his head, not blinking. “Sergeant Donovan.”  
Unmistakable cheekbones. The same, Greg would bet his pension the exact same, black overcoat. No scarf, but a purple button up shirt that Greg remembered seeing on Sherlock once. Changed, but with enough of the same man left that Greg thought it had to be the same one. Only, that was impossible. Faking your own suicide in front of twenty witnesses wasn’t something you did on a whim. Even Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t have been able to do it. And what about John? Had he known all these years and simply lied to the rest of them?  
“Freak?” Sally beat Greg to speaking. “That really you?”  
“Donovan. I see your temper hasn’t improved in my absence. Still sleeping at Anderson’s place when his wife’s out?”  
Sally laughed lightly and around around Greg to pat Sherlock’s shoulder. “Good to have you back, freak.” Greg rarely saw her this friendly, especially when Sherlock was around. “And just so you know, it’s not Anderson anymore. It’s - “  
“Your ex.” Sherlock turned away and towards Greg with a tight smile that would more accurately be called a grimace. “You’re wearing you old ring, hair’s back in your old style but clear signs of being a recent cut, and no perfume. Yes, it’s really me, so you can stop pretending to like me.”  
Greg waved Sally back to the scene as Sherlock closed the distance between them. “Don’t be so hard on her. She took it badly, when you jumped. Thought it was her fault.”  
Sherlock tilted his head, brows furrowed in puzzlement. At least, it looked like puzzlement. Greg wasn’t quite sure, since he had never seen that expression on Sherlock’s face before. “Arent’ you going to ask how I did it? Or make me prove that it’s really me?”  
Greg shook his head. “If anyone was coming back from the bed, it would be you. And I’ve learned not to question miracles. As for details on how you did it, I’ve got bigger things to worry about.” He cleared his throat as one of the officers called his name and he deliberately ignored the man. “You’ll be wanting a lift, then.”  
Sherlock seemed not to have heard him, or at least was actively ignoring him. “Sniper was on the ninth floor of the office building. Locally purchased weapon, has a pistol for protection. Didn’t do him much good.” The last words were said quietly, as if they were not meant for Greg’s ears.  
“Sherlock?” Greg took a half step closer. They were only a foot apart now. If Sherlock turned back they’d be breathing in each other’s faces. “What do you know about the sniper’s pistol? We only just found it ourselves.”  
Sherlock didn’t change where he was looking, as far as Greg could tell, but his body language became a lot more shifty and nervous. The way he looked when any of the officers had called him out on lying about evidence or a case. “Simple observation, nothing more. Do you trust me, Lestrade?”  
“Trust you? Bloody hell man, after all that happened there’s not many other people I can trust.”  
“Good.” Sherlock turned in a whirl of overcoat and curls. “Then don’t go looking into this. The sniper’s been take care of. There’s no case here worth your time. Even that incompetent idiot Anderson won’t be able to make a case appear out of this.” He strode away from Greg and the scene, ducking under the yellow tape before he paused, turned, and gave one of his looks to Greg. “Now I believe you mentioned a ride?”  
Greg’s car was parked just outside the police tape. The crowd attracted by the arrival of the MET and the whole sniper situation had just started to disperse. When they saw him come up, the stragglers convened at the edge of the roped off area.  
“What happened?” “How many bodies have you found so far?” “Have you caught the guy?” “My house is down this street!” Sherlock ignored the cacophony of voices; Greg made a quick “no comment” as he climbed into the driver’s seat.  
“They took him to St. Bart’s.” He provided when Sherlock didn’t say anything. The consultant still didn’t reply until they pulled out onto the main road.  
“I know where they took him.”  
Greg cast a careful sidelong glance at his passenger. Sherlock had changed in the intervening three years. beyond the shorter hair and loss of that familiar scarf, there was more. Sherlock’s eyes reminded Greg of when he’d first met the younger man; hollow, having seen too much, jaded. Like the hardened veterans of the force, Sherlock had the starring look in his eyes of a man who had been around this particularly nasty curve in life once too often.  
Sherlock was thinner too, his cheekbones drawn out even more. His shirt sat on his chest weirdly. In the times before, Sherlock had always dressed impeccably, and to impress. Even when Sherlock had been riding the high of cocaine, his wardrobe was tailored to his body. Now, it would seem as if he’d both gained and lost weight in the wrong places for his shirt. It clung to his upper chest but bunched in loose folds across his shoulders. It was the shirt of a different man. The shirt of a man without muscles or scars. A man with flashing eyes and ever moving tongue.  
With a flash of insight, Greg connected the dots. Sherlock had worn the shirt for John. Of course, Greg thought as he made the turn into the St. Bart’s car lot. Sherlock had come back because of John, no one else, and apparently worn one of his old shirts. Greg was no genius but he knew what that meant.  
“He’ll be glad to see you,” as he came up to a stop in front of the main doors. Sherlock didn’t reply.

“He was on his way to pick me up from work.” Mary hugged herself around the chest as she spoke. The hospital ward wasn’t cold but it felt like it was. And the appropriately sympathetic expression on the officer’s face wasn’t doing much to help. “We were going out to dinner. Nothing unusual, just the italian place downtown he loved.”  
The officer nodded understandingly. “Ma’am, did your boyfriend have any past dealings with snipers? Anyone who might want to hurt him and have this sort of skill set?”  
She shuffled her feet, the rubber soles of her running shoes making soft pats on the tile floor. “He was in the army. Probably knew a lot of snipers.”  
“Anyone you can name?”  
She shook her head, hair trailing gently over her shoulders and v-neck tshirt. “He didn’t like talking about it. Never mentioned anyone, just sort of packed it all away. I don’t think he kept in contact with any of them. He never mentioned it to me at least.”  
The police officer nodded. “Anything else you can remember? Anything strange happen that day, did he say anything about someone following him?” The man’s whole behaviour was open, inviting, understanding. the fact that Mary knew he probably didn’t actually care and had taken a course in how to behave around witnesses marred her impression of him, despite his attitude.  
She shook her head. “Nothing.”  
“Thanks for everything, Miss Morstan.” The officers closed up his notebook after handing her a slip of yellow paper with his name and the Yard’s phone number printed in neat handwriting. “If you think of anything else, let us know.”  
“Of course.” She watched as he turned down the hallway. Just as she was turning back into John’s curtained section of emerge, she saw the officer get stopped by what looked to be another two officers. Mary didn’t stand in the doorway for very long, and the group was too far off for her to actually see what was going on. But she did see the taller newcomer turn and catch her watching them before she slide behind the curtain.  
“There we go, John. Peace and quiet at last.”  
Somehow, there weren’t any nurses or doctors hovering over John at the moment. Mary was grateful for the private moment that small fact gave her.  
She pulled the chair up to the edge of the bed, wishing she could pick up his hand or at least touch him. But the doctor’s had said not to do that as much as she could. They didn’t know the extent of his brain injuries yet. Further movement could make it that much worse.  
“You’ll prove them wrong, won’t you John?” She tried to give him a smile. One of the machines beeped loudly in some rapid rhythm, and then quieted. She couldn’t hold the smile. She gulped a little as she looked at the machines gathered around the bed. Heart monitor. Artificial respirator. Several IV drips. Others that she didn’t know the purpose of. “You proved them wrong before. Do it now.”  
The doctors had been by earlier, before and after the xrays. The bullet had entered just above his left eye, passing through his brain and neck before lodging in his shoulder. They were in the midst of preparing the surgery procedure; rains tended to be extra tricky to operate one, Mary had been told, and they needed to be sure of what they were doing. John’s hair had already be shaved in the area where they would cut open his skull, the bed on wheels to be moved to the operating room. The delay had come because the neurosurgeon wasn’t in at the time.  
“Miss Morstan?” Mary didn’t look away from John’s face. “They’re ready for him in surgery.  
“Of course.” Her desire was to sit there and just watch them take John away. It felt easier than standing up, pulling the chair with her as she back into the corner, nodding when one of the nurses asked if she was alright. She’d be alright. She wasn’t the one unconscious, a bullet track through her brain, breathing only through a plastic tube shoved down her throat. No, that was John. John who might never wake up. John who would have extensive brain damage even if he did.  
John was the one who wouldn’t be all right, so why ask her if she was?  
There was an empty silence in the room after the nurses had taken John out, along with the machines. MAry didn’t want to move. So she remained standing, leaning on the back of the chair, as if it was all that could keep her upright. It nearly felt like it was. Her knees were shaking, and she thought that the whole world might drop away from her.  
Just a day ago her life had been the picture of normality. John had his work at the clinic; her days were spent at her private therapy practice. They had their flat together, had talked about getting married, and looked forward to saturday walks in the park. Oh, Mary knew that John had been through a lot in the past. Last year, she’d visited Sherlock Holmes’s grave with him on the anniversary of the man’s suicide. It was a time John talked about even less than he did of his army days.  
A gentle cough pulled her out of her inner reflection. “Miss Morstan?” She looked up to see an older man, dressed in a sharp suit and slightly old looking coat, with balding grey hair and the gruff face of a man with too little sleep under his belt. “Can I come in?”  
Mary nodded.  
“I’m Greg Lestrade.” He held out his hand to her, which she gently shook. “I used to work with John.”  
“He never mentioned you.”  
Greg laughed, softly, as if at a private joke. “No, well, he wouldn’t. We didn’t exactly part on the best terms. I uh, said some wrong things.”  
“What brings you here? How did you know John was even here?”  
Greg sighed. “It’s a long story. I work with Scot-”  
“Oh shut up Lestrade. Stop dancing around the point and spit it out.”  
The imperious voice came from the doorway. Mary turned, mirrored in her motion by Greg, and saw the speaker. He cut an impressive sight, backlit by an ceiling light directly above him. He crossed the area in three quick strides, grabbed her hand, shook it once and retreated once more to the point of their little triangle.  
“Sherlock Holmes. And yes, I’m supposed to be dead.”

They sat across the room from each other, the silence like a thick fog between them. Greg had left half an hour ago, something about getting Mrs. Hudson. Mary hadn’t paid attention to his half-muttered words, too lost in her own thoughts. Sherlock hadn’t seemed to pay the inspector any mind either. It was as if they existed in separate planes of reality, invisible walls dividing them from each other.  
On Mary’s part, it was simply that she had nothing to say. What words were you supposed to use when your boyfriend’s famous flatmate comes back from the dead? Life up to this point hadn’t prepared her for this. Sherlock had started to explain, when he’d first arrived, but something in her face make him stop, blink, and then let the silence fall back into place.  
Mary let it slip on.  
Even the nurses, stopping at the edge of the curtains occasionally, didn’t end it. There was the usual hospital noises and echoes of machines from the rest of the emergency ward, of course. It was dead in their little box of curtains though. The noise from outside couldn’t break the impossible silence within. There was, perhaps, nothing short of a miracle that could.  
Martha Hudson had never been known to wait on miracles.  
She marched into the room with all power of a queen stepping into her throne room. Mary had one glimpse of the elderly woman’s face before the former landlady had passed her by and was standing over Sherlock.  
“Shame on you, Sherlock Holmes.” And Mrs. Hudson, whose hair had long ago turned grey and drank herbal soothers with an almost religious reverence, slapped him across the face. “For shame. Going off and letting him think you’d died.”  
Mary couldn’t see Sherlock’s face, so she had only his voice to go by for his reaction. “Mrs. Hudson, I could hardly-”  
He stopped talking as Mrs. Hudson knelt down, her hands going to rest on his knees. “Now I know your parents weren’t the best sort,” her tone held that of a concerned teacher or grandmother. From what little John had told her, this fit with the Martha Hudson he had known. “And that brother of yours certainty isn’t the good Lord’s gift to manners. But really Sherlock, where ever did you get the idea of letting your best friend think you were dead for three years?”  
“It was for his own good.” A slight pause. “And yours, and Lestrades. Moriarty would have killed all of you.”  
Mary started to fidget, unable to remain still for this long while feeling completely shut out of the conversation. Like being the third person on an intimate date or the awkward observer to a family squabble. She didn’t feel like a complete stranger though, which made it worse. John, his blog and the news had told her enough about the pair she now observed in front of her.  
“Oh Sherlock.”  
Mary was startled, and the brief glimpse she was now given of Sherlock’s face was that of a man who had been equally caught of guard, when Mrs. Hudson pulled him off his chair and into her arms for a hug, There was a few seconds where Sherlock seemed like a baby, unable to figure out where he should place his arms. Then we was gently bending them around and wrapping his thin fingers over Mrs. Hudson’s shoulders.

John woke up slow, everything in front of him a strange blur of white and dark blue, like a kindergartner's first attempt at painting. He blinked, several times, and while that didn't help resolve anything in front of him, he became aware of a voice and several beeping machines. The voice...He tried to make his senses focus in on the gentle sound of a woman speaking. It was an effort that brought sweat to his forehead and make his head hurt worse than it already was. The blackness started in at him again.  
He caught a fragment of a voice before he passed out. “Relax.”  
The voice sounded like Mrs. Hudson.  
The next time he woke up, it was to a gentle hand pressed over his. He was aware that what he was staring up at was a white tile ceiling and that someone was speaking to him in a low voice. Beyond that, he really couldn’t think of anything else detailed around his situation.  
Whoever was speaking was mid-sentence when John awoke. “Says it might help. That hearing my voice will bring you out of the coma. As if such biological facts could be broken by sounds.”  
A pause, and John thought he might black out again.  
“It was my fault. I didn’t stop Moran in time. He knew he couldn’t hurt me. I was better than him. Had him cornered. Or so I thought.”  
John had trouble placing the speaker’s voice. The words didn’t make sense, and yet they made sense. Like a foreign language. The beeping picked up, and the voice stopped for a while.  
“I didn’t see what he saw, I was blind! Stupid. Stupid me. You’d punch me again, John, if you were awake.”  
Whose voice was that? It tickled the back of John’s brain, like he should know it right off. He didn’t do, and it made it all the worse to listen to the speaker.  
“He couldn’t stop me, couldn’t hurt me, but he could hurt you. Like Moriarty said. Burn my heart out. Just like he promised at the pool. So Moran found you and shot you. Because Moriarty died and I didn’t. I cheated at the game; Moran played by the rules. I didn’t jump, so you got shot.”  
“It’s been two years and I’m sorry for that John. I had to make sure Moriarty was well and truly gone.”  
Suddenly John could remember who the voice belonged to.  
The beeping picked up, loud and harsh until it was racing in his ears, a whine that hardly stopped. He became aware that he couldn’t breath, like he was choking. Someone was talking, kept talking cause it was that voice. The one he shouldn’t be hearing. The dead man.  
His eyes snapped open. When had he shut them? He didn’t remember that.  
“John.”  
“Here John. Follow my voice.”  
Black hair. White shirt. Thin cheekbones. Blue scarf.  
“Hello.”  
Sherlock.


End file.
